AI is about to send millions to ‘professional identity purgatory.’ Here’s what I discovered after my 30 year career crashed to a halt

On November 7, 2023, my career ended. Not with a dramatic firing, not with a bitter exit, but with an acquisition that made my role redundant. Nearly three decades in the industry. Nine years in an executive role at a biotech company. And then: nothing.

I didn’t just lose a job. I lost the scaffolding I’d built my professional identity on. I told myself it was a blip. I was wrong.

What followed was something I’ve come to call “professional identity purgatory”—a seemingly endless holding pattern with no title, no structure, and no clear direction. It’s the space between who you were professionally and who you might become.

In Catholic theology, purgatory is the in-between—not heaven, not hell, but a passage of purification before something better. That’s the metaphor I keep returning to because “professional identity purgatory” isn’t failure, it’s transition with no timeline. It’s the disorienting gap between losing an identity you’d spent decades building and not yet knowing what replaces it.

We are currently in a period defined by significant professional transition. Millions of people are likely about to enter “professional identity purgatory” thanks to AI. I’m not an economist or a technologist, but what I do know—from living it, and from watching peers navigate it—is that the threat AI potentially poses to professionals goes deeper than lost tasks or restructured roles. It strikes at something more fundamental: the sense that what you spent your career mastering still matters. For generations, professional identity was durable—you built expertise, accumulated knowledge, climbed. Technology is disrupting that continuity in ways that are genuinely hard to sit with, not because the work disappears overnight, but because professional relevance starts to feel less certain. For people whose self-worth is tied to that relevance, the uncertainty alone can be destabilizing.

For people who’ve built their self-worth around titles, expertise, and relentless forward momentum, purgatory is particularly brutal. We don’t do well in holding patterns. We fill them with activity, with meetings, projects, and anything that mimics the rush that comes with progress. We avoid the discomfort at all costs, because the discomfort forces a reckoning we’ve spent our careers outrunning: Who am I without the work?

What I’ve Learned (and am Still Learning) Inside Purgatory

I want to be clear: I don’t have a framework, tools or tips on how to handle purgatory because I’m not on the other side yet. But I’ve been living in “professional identity purgatory” long enough to offer a few observations for those who may join me soon.

Stop filling voids with noise. My first instinct after leaving was to pack my calendar with things that felt familiar—networking coffees, mentoring conversations, advising. All legitimate. All also avoidance. Purgatory is uncomfortable by design. It’s trying to tell you something. The busier you stay, the harder it is to hear the message.

Let your identity be provisional. I still catch myself introducing myself with my old title—only now with a “former” as a qualifier. There’s no shame in that. Shaping your identity isn’t a quick iPhone OS update. The work in purgatory is learning to hold your professional self loosely—to try on new versions of yourself rather than defend the old one.

Redefine what expertise means. AI may automate much of the world around us. But it can’t touch judgement. Relationships. Context. The capacity to ask the right question rather than just answer the one in front of you. Those things don’t disappear with your title. They just need a new vehicle.

“Professional identity purgatory” is not a detour. For many of us, it may be the most important time in our careers—the place where the question we’ve been outrunning finally catches up: not “What do I do now?” but “Who am I when I’m not doing it?”

The professionals facing AI-driven disruption in the coming years won’t all lose their jobs overnight. But when it does happen, many will be met with the realization that their professional role was directly tied to their sense of self. The structure. The daily purpose. The identity.

When that happens, the instinct will be to run—to fill the void, project confidence, land the next thing as fast as possible. I’ve tried all of it. I understand the impulse.

But the purgatories we run from are very often the ones we need most. I’m still in mine. I’m tired of running. And for the first time in thirty years, I’m learning what it feels like to simply be still.

Geoff Curtis is the former executive vice president, corporate affairs and chief communications officer at Horizon Therapeutics. During his nearly 30-year health care communications career, he has worked domestically and internationally in various roles on both the client and agency side. This column is adapted from his book, Embracing Your Own Purgatory, which is available now.

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com